After being given still yet another 'Cook's tour', the OECD's neoliberal ad hoc panel left Japan with their typical neoliberal convictions further entrenched. Outside of such polite circles, talk is that the 'public' is now upset that with the 'big bang' reforms of 2004, surprise surprise, tuition costs went up at the former national and former public universities. And that the reforms have been nothing but an unmitigated disaster while at the same time the predicted demographic disaster has failed to materialize. But the neoliberals of the OECD will just say, "Ah ah, too little too late." Another thing that is happening is that, with the LPD's fall from power, the Ministry of Education is in disarray (more than its usual disarray that is) and the former national universities are headed into financial and fiscal decline.
The full OECD report is available here. JPN HEO will try to analyze the report and write a review in the near future.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/44/12/42280329.pdf
Excerpt one:
It is against this background that, on April 1st 2004, Japanese higher education underwent the kind of ‘big bang’ reform which was unprecedented. Though regarded with some hostility within the universities themselves, there was a widespread political and public sentiment that reform was overdue and that, in comparison with the higher education systems among Japan’s traditional peers in North America, Australasia and Europe, Japanese universities were falling behind. The reforms, at least in their intention, were fundamental and far-reaching. As a result, though a few years have elapsed since the reforms were introduced, their impact is still working its way through. Japanese tertiary education is still in transition. The desired benefits of the reforms are not yet secured and if they do not materialise, both political and public patience is likely to wear thin. There is a widespread demand that the tertiary education system become, via the modernisation agenda embedded in the reforms, more responsive, more agile, more globally competitive and accompanied by higher standards and higher quality all round.
Excerpt two:
In spite of the pace and scope of change in recent years, much remains to be done. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology begun to change from an organisation accustomed to exercising detailed managerial and financial direction of higher education institutions into one that no longer does so. However, it has not yet fully worked out its new role within the tertiary system, nor has it fully equipped itself with the performance-based information and repertoire of incentives that it needs to monitor and shape the activities of newly autonomous institutions. And, for their part, some higher education institutions appear keen to operate as they long have done, holding fast to the Humboldtian vision of the university and to long-standing institutional practices - with respect to academic careers, to internal resource allocation, and institutional leadership.
As we have outlined in the report, we think university leaders and ministry officials have much to gain from embracing continued change; indeed, that it is the necessary condition for gaining wider public investment in the sector. And, we think that central government authorities and stakeholders outside of government have much to gain from enlisting their support. During the course of our visit we met with men and women - professors, administrators, and civil servants - who clearly grasped the new possibilities that deepened reform makes possible, and who are eager to press forward with change. Working together with patience, trust, and understanding they can ensure that Japan system of tertiary education stands as a model to the entire OECD, and, indeed, the wider world.
Showing posts with label national university corporations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label national university corporations. Show all posts
18 December 2009
10 April 2009
The End of Japan's National Development and Reform Eras for Higher Education
An earlier version of this article ran last year at MR ZINE. Here is an updated and corrected version.
The End of Japan's National Development State for Higher Education
Charles Jannuzi, University of Fukui, Japan
Japan's vast higher education system has around 5,000 institutions, with the count still growing. This includes a tertiary level of about 1,300 government-certified, degree-awarding colleges and universities. Seven hundred forty-five of these are designated as 'daigaku'--a term which refers to any institution that has received government sanction to award four-year degrees equivalent to a baccalaureate. These four-year universities along with junior and technical colleges enroll close to three million undergraduate students, including about 120,000 foreign nationals, the vast majority of whom are from China.
One reason why Japan, despite a lack of population growth, is able to sustain such a huge system is that the national and local governments directly fund and indirectly subsidize higher education in multiple ways. However, the national government's central role and enormous fiscal commitment to the higher education system also places many requirements upon its beneficiaries. Here lies a central paradox in the neoliberally inspired reforms of higher education: the government asserts that universities need to establish 'local autonomy' but at the same time it asserts the right to have control over most aspects of the institutions, starting with the finances.
In the case of the private universities, the financial measures are more like 'carrot and stick'. The national government does attempt to exert strong ministerial control over how institutions run degree programs and spend grants and research funding. In the case of the national universities, the government also oversees how they carry out research in science, technology, and engineering.
Any analysis of a detail sufficient to be informative about how public and private monies are used to fund higher education in Japan will reveal considerable disparities and complexities across the entire system of universities, institutes of technology, attached and associated research centers, two-year junior and technical colleges, and special training institutes. In the case of the universities, many of the differences in funding and financial base depend on the institution's traditional type and charter: national, public (prefectural or metropolitan), or private (non-profit).
Japan's government continues to struggle with the country's extended period of low economic growth which started in the early 1990s and is well into its second decade. The export-led recoveries of the past 7 years have been hit first by the disruptions of 9-11 and its aftermath and then the finance-driven US debacle of 2008. Because of regular and supplementary budgets designed to stimulate the stagnant domestic economy, there have been growing fiscal deficits and an accumulation of more and more public debt. Servicing the national debt takes up over 20% of the annual budget, and the value of bonds issued by the government every year exceeds that budget. In 2005 the proportion of national and local government debt to GDP was 170%, which is much worse, for example, than the EU's fiscal delinquent, Italy. All this has left the national government basically unable to respond with any large stimulus measures in 2008-9. On the bright side, unlike the US, Japan can draw on its large pool of personal and corporate savings to purchase the government bonds that underlie all this deficit spending (both directly and through placing deposits with savings institutions). It does not have to export its debt service requirements.
Since fiscal stimulus and monetary measures (such as very low interest rates) failed to counter a lack of growth and price deflation, some politicians and think tanks have called for an end to the 'national development state' that characterized much of Japan's political economy in the period 1945-2000. Instead they have proposed privatization of the public sectors of the political economy combined with liberalization of regulatory regimes (both of which already find precedent in the privatizations and liberalizations of the 1980s and 1990s). Their new Japan is to be a post-industrial, services-oriented, consumption-driven economy more in ideological harmony with its dominant ally and frequent bilateral trade disputant, the U.S. (since trade imbalances in Japan's favor have periodically led to protectionist measures from the US).
According to consumer price indexes in 2007-8, deflation had finally turned into inflation because of high oil and commodity prices, the results, in part, of an oil pricing bubble centered in NYC and London but which Japanese investing patterns most likely helped 'fuel' (because of the constant search to escape low returns on investments in Japan). Japan must import almost all of the mineral resources it uses in industrial production as well as 60% of its food in terms of caloric value. The moderate inflation of 2007-8 most likely did not translate into improved pricing power for domestic producers and retailers because when the oil futures bubble burst the global economy had already fallen into a calamitous state. Moderate inflation instead of deflation might have helped them to realize higher profits in the domestic market if they could have exerted more control over pricing, instead of relying on exports to more lucrative overseas markets, such as the U.S. Even the positive surge in GDP in 2007 was marred by two negative quarters and was more likely a deviation than any indicator of future steady growth.
After Japan's financial and economic bubbles came unwound in the late 1980s and early 1990s, corporate leaders collectively warned the government that the private sector would be unwilling and unable to maintain such a large investment in basic scientific research and development. They also complained about what they perceived to be the low quality of research produced by Japan's university system, particularly its national universities. The national universities, in
turn, countered that the problem was a lack of government investment in new infrastructure in support of research at the institutions. So, from 1995 the national government has been implementing basic five-year national plans to increase public spending on R&D in order to make up for the decline in the private sector's research.
Much of the increased expenditure has been money pumped into the construction of new research centers (and high-rise buildings to house them) at the national universities and research institutes, with the goal of significantly expanding the types of research and the scale. At the same time, the national universities and research institutes have been forced to accept major changes in administration in order to use the funds to build new facilities as well as become eligible to more future funds that will be awarded on a competitive basis.
Somewhere between 8-10% of the annual national budget goes to the category of 'education and science.' Statements of exact amounts for the past decade vary by year, source, definitions, and exchange rates, but this 'super category' of expenditure can be estimated to be between US$ 60-80 billion year after year. That figure grows by tens of billions more if much of the national funding for medical research that is disbursed through the ministry of health is also included in the accounting.
Again depending upon definitions, all forms of education that are tertiary or other higher probably receive close to 40% of this, an amount that could be put at around $25 billion. The national government also subsidizes education and higher education through its revenue sharing and tax grants to local governments. Local governments nationwide spend about double the amount the national government does on school education, but higher education only receives about 7% of this. Much of that 7% goes to fund the country's 86 public (prefectural or metropolitan) universities. Total spending on higher education, both public and private, probably only accounts for about 1% of total GDP in Japan, making this sector of education enormous but under-funded, especially when compared to the United States.
The past two decades of reform in higher education have resulted in a blurring or even loss of old categories for classifying institutions. For example, publicly listed stock companies have formed a consortium to run the country's first for-profit university. Meanwhile, many former private (non-profit) junior colleges have upgraded to four-year universities in an attempt to keep enrollments up, as more and more young women graduating from high school choose to enter university instead of the traditional two-year college (which are largely now seen as irrelevant 'finishing schools').
The most important change, though, in reducing--if not eliminating--the government's role in making higher education equitable, affordable, and accessible in all regions of Japan, has been the 'privatization' and 'corporatization' of around two hundred national and public universities under P.M. Koizumi (2001-6). Unfortunately the consequences of these drastic alterations of the role of government in higher education in Japan could severely damage teaching and research at lower-ranked and smaller universities, especially ones in more remote regions. For example, many former national and public universities will eventually have to raise their exam, application, and tuition fees 30-50%, to levels more like those of private universities, in order to survive because they have no other way of realistically keeping their accounts in surplus.
The reforms could also undermine institutional autonomy and academic freedom. Former national and public types of universities had been collegiately and departmentally managed but almost completely dependent on annual disbursements of public funds in bloc grants. Although the faculty of these institutions were overall vehemently opposed to corporatization, they found themselves collectively unable to organize in any way that might have affected the outcomes of the reform process. Their much coveted life-long employment was actually not academic tenure as an American professor might recognize it but rather a benefit of civil servant status. However, as civil servants they were unable to organize industrial actions such as walk-outs and strikes. Now they have lost much of the protections and restrictions of their civil service status and can, in theory, go on strike, but the reforms that they opposed are already in effect by law, administrative structure, and implemented policies.
With legislation enacted in October 2003, Japan's 87 national universities were re-established on 1 April 2004 as individual national university corporations (NUCs). The newborn NUCs are being weaned from annual bloc grants by a reduction of 1% per year. These formerly national institutions have enrollment quotas set by the national government which then determine the size of bloc grants disbursed annually in support of taught programs. Under the old system, this meant that the top university in Japan, the University of Tokyo, would receive the same amount per student from bloc grants as do the handful of tiny national teachers' colleges.
To help compensate for the formulaic reduction in annual bloc grants, NUCs are now allowed to raise their tuition fees by a maximum of 10%. Eventually the smaller NUCs that are unable to win the contest for competitive grants or fail to build large endowments may be permitted to charge rates that are similar to the more numerous private universities. Private institutions make up around 75% of higher education, and their average annual tuition fees of around US $7,400 are about 35% higher than those at national or public institutions.
In the next decade, NUCs must scramble to shift their finances to the business operations of their school corporations, deriving funding from the sort of mix that private universities and colleges have long had to subsist with--limited competitive government grants, higher fees (e.g., tuition, but also admission and entrance exam fees), donations, investments, joint ventures with other corporations, and revenue-earning business activities. Meanwhile, as the NUCs' guaranteed share of national education funding is reduced, elite private universities (such as Waseda and Keio) are sure to increase their efforts to compete for the national funds that are being offered to create an elite 30 world-class universities.
During the period 2004-6 the national and prefectural governments severed ownership ties to higher education in order to save money, though the covers of social and institutional reform were used to sell to the public this fundamental shift in the government's role. The biggest cost savings come about because the national and local layers of government will be able to jettison the obligations of lifetime employment for the hundreds of thousands of civil servants employed
in national and public higher education. Also, as the national and public universities were forced into corporate status, the national government, by acts of legislation, put more centralized administrations in charge of the institutions. The newly centralized, streamlined administrations of the university corporations are now in conflict with the previously well-entrenched collegiate and departmental styles of management that have characterized national and public higher education in Japan since 1947.
While bloc grants to the former national universities is being reduced by 1% per year, the national government is directing more money into competitive grants for research. A prominent goal has been to spend annually an amount of public funds at least equal to 1% of GDP on scientific research and development. Unlike the US, very little of this is earmarked for military purposes. This has benefited universities with research laboratories and centers, especially those within the national university system of 87 institutions with colleges of science, engineering, or medicine.
Japan's commitment to civilian scientific research matches in size the 1-1.5% of GDP that is annually put towards higher education in total from both public and private sources. To put the higher education figure in perspective, Japan's proportion is similar to most other OECD nations but is also less than half of what the US commits. But there are two ways of looking at that. Does this show that the US is the world's only superpower in higher education expenditure? Or does it show, just as with its health care sector, the US is a high-cost, irresponsible rogue state that does not fit with its OECD satellites?
Japan's political economy is structured around a centralized national government, which attempts to exert control across the entire country from the top down to the lowest of government. The higher education sector is no exception. American-style accreditation has not yet been a major factor in standardization and quality assurance at universities and colleges. However, it soon could be because the national government has forced the former national and public universities into an external review process administered by four accrediting agencies.
Still, until the outcomes of the first external review process become clear next year and until a critical number of private institutions agree to join this process, the national government is the single source of 'legitimacy' for universities and colleges. Institutions can issue degrees, certificates, and diplomas only because the national government approves and certifies them. The government also sets enrollment quotas for all certified universities and colleges.
It is also uncertain whether or not American-style accreditation processes can validly assess Japanese institutions. First, in 1947-8 the American Occupation attempted to establish American-style accreditation when it controlled the reform of the entire education system of Japan. But the conservatives who have run the Japanese government since the end of the Occupation have always asserted control of the university system as an integral part of territorial sovereignty. Second, it should be pointed out that American-style accreditation is not understood well either inside or outside of Anglo-North America and is not inherently 'universal.' An American institution does not have the legal right to issue a valid degree because of its accreditation but rather because of its charter with its respective state government.
American-style accreditation does not even seem to have kept up with higher education in the US, let alone elsewhere. Is it really a model for export to countries where higher education is characterized by a strong relationships with a centralized national government? Can it assess new modes of delivery (such as modular study done through distance learning over the Internet)? These are questions that have not even been answered in the US.
The national government has set the quarter of Japan's higher education sector that had been public down the path of corporatization and privatization in order to save money. Removing hundreds of thousands of civil servants from the national and local government's books will certainly make finances look better. But it is not going to do anything to help the long-term financial health of higher education. Parents and students will end up bearing the costs of the government's down-sizing of its civil servant ranks.
A 50% decline in the size of the cohorts of senior high graduates over the past decade and a half has meant that getting into most private universities and colleges is more a matter of money than measured academic achievement. Reduced annual bloc grants to the former national and public universities will most likely lead to a rise in fees closer to the level of private ones -- from around $4,500 now to $7,500 in the next five years. Family income, then, will become the single biggest factor in determining access to mass higher education -- if it is not already. Increases in fees may not be enough for smaller institutions and programs in more remote areas, so many locations will see the loss of schools, departments, courses of study through mergers and disestablishment.
Has Japan's government abandoned its central role in higher education? It is getting rid of the bloc grant system while at the same time drastically reducing the number of civil servants in lifetime employment. Such measures will make national and public universities less equitable and less accessible nationwide. This change will most likely have its most negative impact on taught programs at smaller national and public universities, typically ones in more remote and rural areas of Japan. As the national government drastically shifts out of subsidizing higher education, the short-term effect may make the government look more sound fiscally through the reduction of deficits. However, if the higher education system becomes more like the U.S.'s, the impact on the entire political economy could be wasteful and inflationary. The parallels between American laissez-faire inefficiency in both health care and higher education are striking.
But here emerges the strongest paradox: The very government that has been dead set on forcing liberalization onto national and public higher education under the catch phrase 'local autonomy' is now seeking to expand its regulatory authority over that sector. For example, the national government has now proposed setting specific curriculum guidelines for higher education in much the same way it already sets standards, specifies curricula, and approves textbooks for the elementary, middle, and high schools. At those levels of education, the government's 'standards' result in constant and unnecessary nationalist disputes with China, the Koreas, and even Okinawa (the center of a culturally distinct region of Japan) over the treatment of controversial history, such as the second world war or the ethno-genesis of the cultures of Japan relative to the rest of East Asia.
What remains to be seen is whether the centralized administrations of the university corporations can emerge independent enough to resist this new assertion of the right of the national government to control higher education. It seems more likely that the faculties, now fractured across tenured and non-tenured lines, will be unable to organize any serious opposition to the government or the university executives loyal to it. Attempts by some prestigious private universities to manage their own financial resources by investing Harvard-style at a time when multiple investment bubbles were coming undone in the US and UK have proven to be disastrous, with losses mounting to billions of dollars.
Moreover, 21st century Japan finds itself unable to respond to the finance-driven calamity that has overtaken the global economies. The long-ruling LDP looks to be losing its monopolistic grip on power; however, its main political rivals (to quite an extent made up of LDP dropouts) are even more wedded to the now- bankrupt ideas of deregulation, liberalization, marketization, and privatization. The Japan national development state seems to have committed ideological suicide in the form of reform overreach while never really escaping its monomaniacal, US-dominated approach to globalization.
For the world's number two political economy and the higher education system it created, this would seem to be not only the end of the national development state but the end of the neo-liberal era of 'reform for reform's sake' as well.
The End of Japan's National Development State for Higher Education
Charles Jannuzi, University of Fukui, Japan
Introduction
Japan's vast higher education system has around 5,000 institutions, with the count still growing. This includes a tertiary level of about 1,300 government-certified, degree-awarding colleges and universities. Seven hundred forty-five of these are designated as 'daigaku'--a term which refers to any institution that has received government sanction to award four-year degrees equivalent to a baccalaureate. These four-year universities along with junior and technical colleges enroll close to three million undergraduate students, including about 120,000 foreign nationals, the vast majority of whom are from China.
One reason why Japan, despite a lack of population growth, is able to sustain such a huge system is that the national and local governments directly fund and indirectly subsidize higher education in multiple ways. However, the national government's central role and enormous fiscal commitment to the higher education system also places many requirements upon its beneficiaries. Here lies a central paradox in the neoliberally inspired reforms of higher education: the government asserts that universities need to establish 'local autonomy' but at the same time it asserts the right to have control over most aspects of the institutions, starting with the finances.
In the case of the private universities, the financial measures are more like 'carrot and stick'. The national government does attempt to exert strong ministerial control over how institutions run degree programs and spend grants and research funding. In the case of the national universities, the government also oversees how they carry out research in science, technology, and engineering.
Any analysis of a detail sufficient to be informative about how public and private monies are used to fund higher education in Japan will reveal considerable disparities and complexities across the entire system of universities, institutes of technology, attached and associated research centers, two-year junior and technical colleges, and special training institutes. In the case of the universities, many of the differences in funding and financial base depend on the institution's traditional type and charter: national, public (prefectural or metropolitan), or private (non-profit).
Over a Decade of Economic, Fiscal and Budgetary Woes
Japan's government continues to struggle with the country's extended period of low economic growth which started in the early 1990s and is well into its second decade. The export-led recoveries of the past 7 years have been hit first by the disruptions of 9-11 and its aftermath and then the finance-driven US debacle of 2008. Because of regular and supplementary budgets designed to stimulate the stagnant domestic economy, there have been growing fiscal deficits and an accumulation of more and more public debt. Servicing the national debt takes up over 20% of the annual budget, and the value of bonds issued by the government every year exceeds that budget. In 2005 the proportion of national and local government debt to GDP was 170%, which is much worse, for example, than the EU's fiscal delinquent, Italy. All this has left the national government basically unable to respond with any large stimulus measures in 2008-9. On the bright side, unlike the US, Japan can draw on its large pool of personal and corporate savings to purchase the government bonds that underlie all this deficit spending (both directly and through placing deposits with savings institutions). It does not have to export its debt service requirements.
Since fiscal stimulus and monetary measures (such as very low interest rates) failed to counter a lack of growth and price deflation, some politicians and think tanks have called for an end to the 'national development state' that characterized much of Japan's political economy in the period 1945-2000. Instead they have proposed privatization of the public sectors of the political economy combined with liberalization of regulatory regimes (both of which already find precedent in the privatizations and liberalizations of the 1980s and 1990s). Their new Japan is to be a post-industrial, services-oriented, consumption-driven economy more in ideological harmony with its dominant ally and frequent bilateral trade disputant, the U.S. (since trade imbalances in Japan's favor have periodically led to protectionist measures from the US).
According to consumer price indexes in 2007-8, deflation had finally turned into inflation because of high oil and commodity prices, the results, in part, of an oil pricing bubble centered in NYC and London but which Japanese investing patterns most likely helped 'fuel' (because of the constant search to escape low returns on investments in Japan). Japan must import almost all of the mineral resources it uses in industrial production as well as 60% of its food in terms of caloric value. The moderate inflation of 2007-8 most likely did not translate into improved pricing power for domestic producers and retailers because when the oil futures bubble burst the global economy had already fallen into a calamitous state. Moderate inflation instead of deflation might have helped them to realize higher profits in the domestic market if they could have exerted more control over pricing, instead of relying on exports to more lucrative overseas markets, such as the U.S. Even the positive surge in GDP in 2007 was marred by two negative quarters and was more likely a deviation than any indicator of future steady growth.
Reformers Push for 'Improved' Higher Ed Sector
After Japan's financial and economic bubbles came unwound in the late 1980s and early 1990s, corporate leaders collectively warned the government that the private sector would be unwilling and unable to maintain such a large investment in basic scientific research and development. They also complained about what they perceived to be the low quality of research produced by Japan's university system, particularly its national universities. The national universities, in
turn, countered that the problem was a lack of government investment in new infrastructure in support of research at the institutions. So, from 1995 the national government has been implementing basic five-year national plans to increase public spending on R&D in order to make up for the decline in the private sector's research.
Much of the increased expenditure has been money pumped into the construction of new research centers (and high-rise buildings to house them) at the national universities and research institutes, with the goal of significantly expanding the types of research and the scale. At the same time, the national universities and research institutes have been forced to accept major changes in administration in order to use the funds to build new facilities as well as become eligible to more future funds that will be awarded on a competitive basis.
Somewhere between 8-10% of the annual national budget goes to the category of 'education and science.' Statements of exact amounts for the past decade vary by year, source, definitions, and exchange rates, but this 'super category' of expenditure can be estimated to be between US$ 60-80 billion year after year. That figure grows by tens of billions more if much of the national funding for medical research that is disbursed through the ministry of health is also included in the accounting.
Again depending upon definitions, all forms of education that are tertiary or other higher probably receive close to 40% of this, an amount that could be put at around $25 billion. The national government also subsidizes education and higher education through its revenue sharing and tax grants to local governments. Local governments nationwide spend about double the amount the national government does on school education, but higher education only receives about 7% of this. Much of that 7% goes to fund the country's 86 public (prefectural or metropolitan) universities. Total spending on higher education, both public and private, probably only accounts for about 1% of total GDP in Japan, making this sector of education enormous but under-funded, especially when compared to the United States.
Big Bang Reforms in Higher Education
The past two decades of reform in higher education have resulted in a blurring or even loss of old categories for classifying institutions. For example, publicly listed stock companies have formed a consortium to run the country's first for-profit university. Meanwhile, many former private (non-profit) junior colleges have upgraded to four-year universities in an attempt to keep enrollments up, as more and more young women graduating from high school choose to enter university instead of the traditional two-year college (which are largely now seen as irrelevant 'finishing schools').
The most important change, though, in reducing--if not eliminating--the government's role in making higher education equitable, affordable, and accessible in all regions of Japan, has been the 'privatization' and 'corporatization' of around two hundred national and public universities under P.M. Koizumi (2001-6). Unfortunately the consequences of these drastic alterations of the role of government in higher education in Japan could severely damage teaching and research at lower-ranked and smaller universities, especially ones in more remote regions. For example, many former national and public universities will eventually have to raise their exam, application, and tuition fees 30-50%, to levels more like those of private universities, in order to survive because they have no other way of realistically keeping their accounts in surplus.
The reforms could also undermine institutional autonomy and academic freedom. Former national and public types of universities had been collegiately and departmentally managed but almost completely dependent on annual disbursements of public funds in bloc grants. Although the faculty of these institutions were overall vehemently opposed to corporatization, they found themselves collectively unable to organize in any way that might have affected the outcomes of the reform process. Their much coveted life-long employment was actually not academic tenure as an American professor might recognize it but rather a benefit of civil servant status. However, as civil servants they were unable to organize industrial actions such as walk-outs and strikes. Now they have lost much of the protections and restrictions of their civil service status and can, in theory, go on strike, but the reforms that they opposed are already in effect by law, administrative structure, and implemented policies.
NUCs Are Born
With legislation enacted in October 2003, Japan's 87 national universities were re-established on 1 April 2004 as individual national university corporations (NUCs). The newborn NUCs are being weaned from annual bloc grants by a reduction of 1% per year. These formerly national institutions have enrollment quotas set by the national government which then determine the size of bloc grants disbursed annually in support of taught programs. Under the old system, this meant that the top university in Japan, the University of Tokyo, would receive the same amount per student from bloc grants as do the handful of tiny national teachers' colleges.
To help compensate for the formulaic reduction in annual bloc grants, NUCs are now allowed to raise their tuition fees by a maximum of 10%. Eventually the smaller NUCs that are unable to win the contest for competitive grants or fail to build large endowments may be permitted to charge rates that are similar to the more numerous private universities. Private institutions make up around 75% of higher education, and their average annual tuition fees of around US $7,400 are about 35% higher than those at national or public institutions.
In the next decade, NUCs must scramble to shift their finances to the business operations of their school corporations, deriving funding from the sort of mix that private universities and colleges have long had to subsist with--limited competitive government grants, higher fees (e.g., tuition, but also admission and entrance exam fees), donations, investments, joint ventures with other corporations, and revenue-earning business activities. Meanwhile, as the NUCs' guaranteed share of national education funding is reduced, elite private universities (such as Waseda and Keio) are sure to increase their efforts to compete for the national funds that are being offered to create an elite 30 world-class universities.
During the period 2004-6 the national and prefectural governments severed ownership ties to higher education in order to save money, though the covers of social and institutional reform were used to sell to the public this fundamental shift in the government's role. The biggest cost savings come about because the national and local layers of government will be able to jettison the obligations of lifetime employment for the hundreds of thousands of civil servants employed
in national and public higher education. Also, as the national and public universities were forced into corporate status, the national government, by acts of legislation, put more centralized administrations in charge of the institutions. The newly centralized, streamlined administrations of the university corporations are now in conflict with the previously well-entrenched collegiate and departmental styles of management that have characterized national and public higher education in Japan since 1947.
Former National Universities Tasked with Research
While bloc grants to the former national universities is being reduced by 1% per year, the national government is directing more money into competitive grants for research. A prominent goal has been to spend annually an amount of public funds at least equal to 1% of GDP on scientific research and development. Unlike the US, very little of this is earmarked for military purposes. This has benefited universities with research laboratories and centers, especially those within the national university system of 87 institutions with colleges of science, engineering, or medicine.
Japan's commitment to civilian scientific research matches in size the 1-1.5% of GDP that is annually put towards higher education in total from both public and private sources. To put the higher education figure in perspective, Japan's proportion is similar to most other OECD nations but is also less than half of what the US commits. But there are two ways of looking at that. Does this show that the US is the world's only superpower in higher education expenditure? Or does it show, just as with its health care sector, the US is a high-cost, irresponsible rogue state that does not fit with its OECD satellites?
Universities Must Accept External Evaluation
Japan's political economy is structured around a centralized national government, which attempts to exert control across the entire country from the top down to the lowest of government. The higher education sector is no exception. American-style accreditation has not yet been a major factor in standardization and quality assurance at universities and colleges. However, it soon could be because the national government has forced the former national and public universities into an external review process administered by four accrediting agencies.
Still, until the outcomes of the first external review process become clear next year and until a critical number of private institutions agree to join this process, the national government is the single source of 'legitimacy' for universities and colleges. Institutions can issue degrees, certificates, and diplomas only because the national government approves and certifies them. The government also sets enrollment quotas for all certified universities and colleges.
Academic Imperialism?
It is also uncertain whether or not American-style accreditation processes can validly assess Japanese institutions. First, in 1947-8 the American Occupation attempted to establish American-style accreditation when it controlled the reform of the entire education system of Japan. But the conservatives who have run the Japanese government since the end of the Occupation have always asserted control of the university system as an integral part of territorial sovereignty. Second, it should be pointed out that American-style accreditation is not understood well either inside or outside of Anglo-North America and is not inherently 'universal.' An American institution does not have the legal right to issue a valid degree because of its accreditation but rather because of its charter with its respective state government.
American-style accreditation does not even seem to have kept up with higher education in the US, let alone elsewhere. Is it really a model for export to countries where higher education is characterized by a strong relationships with a centralized national government? Can it assess new modes of delivery (such as modular study done through distance learning over the Internet)? These are questions that have not even been answered in the US.
Higher Fees, Less Affordable Higher Education
The national government has set the quarter of Japan's higher education sector that had been public down the path of corporatization and privatization in order to save money. Removing hundreds of thousands of civil servants from the national and local government's books will certainly make finances look better. But it is not going to do anything to help the long-term financial health of higher education. Parents and students will end up bearing the costs of the government's down-sizing of its civil servant ranks.
A 50% decline in the size of the cohorts of senior high graduates over the past decade and a half has meant that getting into most private universities and colleges is more a matter of money than measured academic achievement. Reduced annual bloc grants to the former national and public universities will most likely lead to a rise in fees closer to the level of private ones -- from around $4,500 now to $7,500 in the next five years. Family income, then, will become the single biggest factor in determining access to mass higher education -- if it is not already. Increases in fees may not be enough for smaller institutions and programs in more remote areas, so many locations will see the loss of schools, departments, courses of study through mergers and disestablishment.
Conclusion
Has Japan's government abandoned its central role in higher education? It is getting rid of the bloc grant system while at the same time drastically reducing the number of civil servants in lifetime employment. Such measures will make national and public universities less equitable and less accessible nationwide. This change will most likely have its most negative impact on taught programs at smaller national and public universities, typically ones in more remote and rural areas of Japan. As the national government drastically shifts out of subsidizing higher education, the short-term effect may make the government look more sound fiscally through the reduction of deficits. However, if the higher education system becomes more like the U.S.'s, the impact on the entire political economy could be wasteful and inflationary. The parallels between American laissez-faire inefficiency in both health care and higher education are striking.
But here emerges the strongest paradox: The very government that has been dead set on forcing liberalization onto national and public higher education under the catch phrase 'local autonomy' is now seeking to expand its regulatory authority over that sector. For example, the national government has now proposed setting specific curriculum guidelines for higher education in much the same way it already sets standards, specifies curricula, and approves textbooks for the elementary, middle, and high schools. At those levels of education, the government's 'standards' result in constant and unnecessary nationalist disputes with China, the Koreas, and even Okinawa (the center of a culturally distinct region of Japan) over the treatment of controversial history, such as the second world war or the ethno-genesis of the cultures of Japan relative to the rest of East Asia.
What remains to be seen is whether the centralized administrations of the university corporations can emerge independent enough to resist this new assertion of the right of the national government to control higher education. It seems more likely that the faculties, now fractured across tenured and non-tenured lines, will be unable to organize any serious opposition to the government or the university executives loyal to it. Attempts by some prestigious private universities to manage their own financial resources by investing Harvard-style at a time when multiple investment bubbles were coming undone in the US and UK have proven to be disastrous, with losses mounting to billions of dollars.
Moreover, 21st century Japan finds itself unable to respond to the finance-driven calamity that has overtaken the global economies. The long-ruling LDP looks to be losing its monopolistic grip on power; however, its main political rivals (to quite an extent made up of LDP dropouts) are even more wedded to the now- bankrupt ideas of deregulation, liberalization, marketization, and privatization. The Japan national development state seems to have committed ideological suicide in the form of reform overreach while never really escaping its monomaniacal, US-dominated approach to globalization.
For the world's number two political economy and the higher education system it created, this would seem to be not only the end of the national development state but the end of the neo-liberal era of 'reform for reform's sake' as well.
18 April 2008
Japan's Tertiary Education System: Developments in the Koizumi Era of Reform
With this first JPN HEO blog post of April 2008, I am using this forum to publish an article that was delivered as a paper at the SEAAIR conference in Langkawi, Malaysia, in September 2006. It will serve as something of a retrospective on happenings in higher education during the Koizumi years of 2000-6 and the preceding years that set up the reforms of what now could be called a political era for Japan.
News posts on the demographic crisis and reasons for the failure of English education will follow in the remaining days of April.
Japan's Tertiary Education System: Developments in the Koizumi Era of Reform
Charles Jannuzi
Abstract
This paper will survey the major developments and changes that have taken place during the past decade in Japan's tertiary education system and put them into international (comparative) and historical perspectives. It also will attempt to assess critically the impact of major reforms on the national and public universities (and the response of the more numerous private universities to these reforms as well). For example, as of 1 April 2004, Japan's 87 national universities were 'denationalized' and incorporated into 'autonomous institutions' (or 'juridical persons') giving them, at least in theory, wider discretionary powers over personnel management, teaching and research assignments, program and curriculum development. The new status was supposed to result in more local autonomy within each institution over the allocation of money for their mandated missions in teaching, conveying public services to their regions, and conducting basic and applied research in science and technology. Have such top-down reforms proven effective, and have their effects matched the government's stated intentions? It is the author's contention that, not only are the reforms a classic case of reform over-reach, but that Japan's overbuilt university system will face demographic, financial and socio-cultural crises that the current Koizumi era of reform, now coming to its close, has utterly failed to address.
Introduction
This year, as the Koizumi period of politics comes to its close, pundits are already skeptically evaluating the accomplishments of his administrations. The PM had promised that his reforms would spare no part of the national government and political economy. He even threatened to destroy his own long-ruling party, the LDP, in order to effect the changes.
Much of the electorate, when asked, said they supported the reform agenda of the popular PM, but in the long run they did not really understand his rationales or his priorities. For example, the profitable postal system (which includes huge, world-class savings and insurance divisions) was not in any state of crisis, however much it might have been the envy of struggling banks and insurance companies. It had already accepted and assimilated reforms that improved its business plans and operations. If anything, the financial health of the postal system showed that government-run companies can compete profitably in a capitalist political economy. Yet the full privatization (and eventual public listing) of the postal system dominated debate in last year's election. Meanwhile, the main opposition to postal reform came from within Koizumi's own ruling LDP. More than anything it would seem Koizumi's desire to 'reform' the postal system reflected a personal vendetta he had against the bureaucrats in charge of it.
Ironically, while the PM was often at war with his own party and the bureaucrats of his own government, his divisive leadership ultimately prevailed, delivering--as much by accident as by design--a landslide victory late last year in a lower house election, defeating a united opposition party (the DPJ) that advocated far more liberal, pro-business reforms! On the other hand, Koizumi's inattention to any sort of foreign policy independent of the US and his open displays of conservative nationalism and unquestioningly pro-US policies alienated much of the rest of Asia, most importantly the emergent economic powerhouse of China.
In one area of government-society relations though, Koizumi and his cabinet pushed for the most radical of reform plans under consideration--the conversion of the country's system of national universities and colleges into individual, autonomous national university corporations (NUCs) in 2003-2004. However, this has to be qualified: the corporatization plan put into effect 1 April (the start of the fiscal and school years in Japan) of 2004 was not so much a break from the previous two decades of developments in tertiary education than a bold culmination in continuity with it.
Overview of Higher Education in Japan
Compulsory education takes in students up to grade 9 (the third year of junior high school), but continuance rates for senior high school are a very high - 95%, with graduation from them almost a matter of course for college-bound students (though the drop-rate from vocational schools is high). A common perception of colleges and universities in Japan is that they are selective and therefore entrance is only gained after passing rigorous examinations; however, continuance rates from the secondary to the tertiary level are now approaching 60%-70%--if one is flexible about what constitutes 'higher education'. Considering the declining populations of secondary level cohorts and the very low failure rate of matriculated students, it is possible to argue that Japanese tertiary education has for quite some time been in an era of open admissions and rivals the U.S. in at least the level of young adults' participation in higher education.
There are currently nearly 1300 accredited colleges and universities in Japan, divided approximately half and half between 2 and 4-year institutions (contrast this with the U.K's totals of 89 universities and 69 colleges of higher education). Even as it became clear that irreversible demographic trends meant fewer students in the future, Japan was still adding new schools well into the 1990s. Such a large number of schools creates a considerable tertiary sector unsurpassed in the non-anglophone world and second only to the US's in developed countries. If the various "senmon gakko" (sometimes akin to the European polytechnic, most usually like the American business college) are also included, the tertiary sector expands to an enormous scope taking in thousands of universities, colleges, and institutes.
Demographic decline and the extended economic recession of the 1990s forced change on Japan, and education has hardly escaped such effects; this includes the tertiary sector of education. One of the possible sources of Japan's economic running in place is demographics: as the society increasingly ages and retires but with a birth rate as low as Italy's, every year there are significantly fewer and fewer children entering the school systems of most prefectures and cities of Japan. Japan's high school graduate population of 2 million in 1992 is predicted to drop to 1.2 million by the year 2010. The question for debate and consideration is this: Can even higher levels of high school graduates enrolling in higher education compensate for the overall decline in numbers? In combination with their nascent efforts at adult life-long learning programs, many colleges and universities are hoping so. For the better run institutions, such hopes may not be entirely unfounded: there are fewer and fewer full-time white-, blue- and grey- collar jobs for high school diploma holders. Therefore, a college education has come to be seen more than ever as the basic award helping one to gain entrance to the adult world of full-time employment. However, even if schools can sustain their enrollments, it is certain that they will have to change in order to meet the needs of (1) high school graduates less academically prepared for sustained, higher level work and (2) older, non-traditional students who may not fit in with the youth culture that now prevails at this level of education.
University Reform: The Prominent Case of the National Universities
In sharp contrast to Japan's image as a nation known for a frenetic commitment to business, modernization and development, most of its national universities have seemed like relatively sleepy oases of teaching and research. Except for a handful of internationally known universities (such as Tokyo Daigaku and Kyoto Daigaku), the national university system had consisted mostly of small, provincial institutions scattered across the country. The national universities and colleges have, since the start of the post-war period, come under the direct control of the Ministry of Education. However the day-to-day running could be called 'collegial', largely managed by co-operating (but also competing) faculties, departments, committees, research labs and academic cliques. Now these universities find themselves at a historic crossroads, one which has brought them under heavy public scrutiny as part of expectations for broad social and institutional reform. In July of 2003, the Japan Diet finally enacted--after much debate--legislation which re-established its 87 national colleges and universities (consolidated earlier from a total of 99 institutions) as 'independent administrative agencies or 'national university juridical persons'; the term now used most often to refer to them is 'national university corporations' (NUCs). Parallel legislation also reorganized under one national agency 59 technical colleges--five-year institutions which combine the last three years of high school with a specialized, two-year tertiary degree. It should be noted here that there is also a parallel system of some 80 public and metropolitan institutions across Japan which are now being forced into a similar set of reforms as the national universities have undergone.
This new autonomy, however, could paradoxically mean potential for more arbitrary control from outside. The universities and colleges have been given their new independent status in order to revitalize research and teaching programs through more centralized administration and the need to prove their qualification for bloc grants while competing more and more for diminishing subsidy from the national government. This creates the first paradox of independence, because the national government and its education ministry can control the central review committees assigned to evaluate the institutions and their programs. Furthermore, the faculty, some of whom may eventually be forced to give up lifelong employment for a system of limited, competitive tenure, have doubts about the criteria by which their own job performances will be judged. University executives and management now have the responsibility of coming up with 'mid-term' six-year plans covering all details of administration, planning, operations, research and teaching.
Revitalizing and Enlivening Higher Education
The transition from a highly selective university system to one for mass education occurred in Japan in the 1970s-1980s. The country now has nearly 1300 universities, junior colleges, and technical colleges (with over 600 being four-year universities). There are over 3 million students enrolled in these institutions, with over 60% of senior high graduates continuing their education into higher levels. Japan's system is only exceeded in size and scope in the developed world by the US's, and is, in terms of its impact on society and the workplace, unsurpassed in the non-anglophone world.
The last decade and a half could be called the first real era of reform for Japan's mass university education system. An often-stated ambition of educational reformers in Japan has been the re-vitalization of the university system with 30 'world-class' institutions at the top. That is, reformers want a tertiary system that can compete with the US's in terms of (1) taught programs beyond the undergraduate level, (2) quantity and quality of basic and applied research, and (3) independence and diversity in financial resources. This goal is far from being realized, though an elite core of around 50 universities and institutes has emerged as better placed historically and geographically to flourish in the liberalized, competitive environment.
Until the early 1990s, because the numbers of high school graduates had always exceeded university admissions slots, matriculation was a reason for celebration. Despite the view that a university education was a four-year vacation from working life, graduation with marginal grades from even the middling universities conferred sufficient cachet to ensure recruitment into lifetime employment. That is no longer the case. Lifetime employment, never guaranteed for women or workers at the thousands of smaller companies anyway, isn't even a serious point of discussion for today's university-leaving job-seekers.
After more than a decade of an over-valued currency and the consequent weak economic performance, related political turmoil, and reform overshoot, more and more Japanese express a loss of faith in old institutions and ways of doing things. There is largely a consensus, though, that there must be reform, though consensus is lacking on what that systematic change should consist of, how it should be carried out, or who should bear the brunt of the immediate consequences. Typical of societies with developed economies and large middle classes, publicly subsidized education has become a major focus of reform, though consistency and coherence of vision is a problem Japan shares with the rest of the developed world.
Some of the goals of the reform being imposed on the national university system (where most university-based research takes place) are felt to be urgent, necessary, and a key component of Prime Minister Koizumi's reform administration. They include the following:
(1) Saving the debt-ridden national government money. This will most obviously be done by eliminating and combining programs, college-/school-level divisions, and even entire universities.
(2) Launching the universities into local self-governance with strict fiscal accountability to the center. Once independent, these institutions may well have to compete for funding among themselves or with other public and private universities. In fact, private universities support the reform of national universities because they hope such changes to the system will free up more public subsidy to go their way. However, given the current fiscal problems facing the national and local governments, it seems that in the long term, the situation will be many more universities competing for a declining pool of national government money. Clearly, universities that hope to survive, regardless of their original foundation (former national, former public, private non-profit, but also now private for profit), will have to find alternative sources of funding and endowment.
(3) Enlivening teaching through effective evaluation of teachers' performance and curriculum development. Many Japanese educators contend that Japanese universities do not foster creativity or flexible approaches to problem-solving in their students, and teacher-centred lectures are often cited as one of the main reasons.
(4) Through competitive tenure the institutions are supposed to become more internationally competitive in scientific and technological research. As already stated, one goal is to take the many small universities and combine them into larger, more cost-efficient operations. It is also hoped that this will result in synergies in basic and applied research that will create at least a handful of world-class universities among the few that will remain. Another reform that is already having an effect is the change in the civil servant status of national university professors, scientists and medical doctors which allows them to form research and business tie-ups with the private sector. Perhaps most importantly the former national and now former public universities are supposed to be put into a competitive dynamic with the more numerous private universities which, up until now, have survived on less government subsidy and higher tuition rates.
Reforming Research
Japan's decade-long recession and deflationary economy have significantly diminished its private industry's ability to finance research in science and technology. Despite slumping tax revenues, ballooning budget deficits, and deteriorating credit ratings, the national government has recently devised strategies attempting to compensate for the decline of private sector R&D. In so doing, it has also intertwined its agenda for increasing research expenditures with its agenda for effective educational reform, especially at the tertiary level. For example, in January 2001, its Science and Technology Agency (STA) was merged with its Ministry of Education (Mombusho) to form the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), an entity that gets a whopping 8% of the national budget. The government also hopes to focus and steer research toward social outcomes to fill future needs more efficiently than it thinks the diverse private sector can. The government's experiences at leading industry-wide R&D consortia reveal that the private sector's research activities are often not basic enough, or they are redundant rather than complementary. Government-co-ordinated efforts involving a large number of companies lack sufficient mutual trust across closely competing companies for there to be real co-operation and collaboration. Also, the national government feels it has to set policy for the 'big picture' of the political economy just coming into focus in ways that make macroeconomic sense if it hopes to foster international competitiveness. It is also widely thought that government policy and spending must galvanize the development of technical solutions to cope adequately with such problems as Japan's graying society or future energy supply shortages.
According to MEXT, in 2001 the national government budgeted over $35 billion for spending falling under the general category of 'science and technology'.Under its second 'Science and Technology Basic Plan' (now in effect), the national government is attempting to fund scientific and technological research at an amount worth 1% or more of GDP each year during a five-year period (from 2001-2005). If broader definitions of what constitutes scientific R&D are used (such as IT , AI and software research), that already large figure could be pushed upward to the $45-55 billion range. In order to help manage qualitatively this huge quantity of money, the second Basic Plan identifies four priorities for funding: life sciences, information technology, the environment, and materials science/nano-technology. Though only a fraction of the amount spent in the private sector on R&D, the bulk of scientific and technological research being conducted in tertiary education in Japan takes place at its 89 national universities (which get the bulk of the $17 billion given annually to university-based research).
The importance of research at these universities is evidenced by the relatively large faculties they have compared to other public or private universities, since many of the full-time employees of the national universities are engaged more in research than teaching. However, national universities invariably reported lack of space on urban campuses with run-down buildings and obsolete equipment. To fix these problems, MEXT had in place a 'Five-year Plan for Urgent Development of Facilities of National Universities'. Such funding efforts were actually a part of the larger Science and Technology Basic plan of the 1990s. In addition to paying for more space and new equipment for research, the goals of this expenditure were specifically (1) to expand graduate schools (including doctoral programs), (2) to promote, identify and reward centers of excellence in research (including 10,000 post-doctoral positions), and (3) to re-organize and develop the former medical colleges as university-annex hospitals capable of clinical research while offering advanced in- and out-patient medical care. These, along with many other goals being discussed, were felt to be necessary if Japan is to create at least 30 universities 'international standard'.
One question repeatedly asked about this 'top 30' goal, however, is: Does it pay anything more than lip service to the improvement of the teaching of undergraduate students--the traditional responsibility of many of the regional national universities? Although comparative studies of test performance in primary and secondary education consistently put Japan's education at or near the top of the OECD countries, international ranking of university systems based on multiple criteria puts its universities consistently at or near the bottom. The national government and MEXT have insisted that, among other things, their reforms for the national universities are intended to promote excellence not only in research but also in all levels of teaching and learning as well, by (1) allowing greater flexibility in admissions criteria (both for undergraduate and graduate programs), (2) focusing on the teaching abilities of academics through both internal and external evaluations, (3) granting national universities independent administrative status (corporatisation), (4) implementing a strict grading system for university students, (5) promoting fixed-term employment so that professors and researchers can transfer easily among universities and colleges, (6) increasing competitive grants for both individual researchers and for entire universities, and (7) establishing more professional and graduate programs up through the doctoral level .
Centres of Excellence (COE) Program
Not willing merely to de-regulate and re-structure, the national government has tried to help institutions attain world class status. For example, there is the government-funded, nationwide establishment of research-oriented 'Centers of Excellence' (COEs), mostly at the national universities and a few elite private ones. Any university or institute that hoped for future top-30 ranking might have helped its case by winning the right to host one or more of the COEs. There are some striking aspects to the plan which seem to raise more questions than they answer, leading to great controversy among national university faculties and administrations. First, there is the 'scrap and build' issue. The plan is supposed to ramrod the reduction and consolidation of the number of national universities, yet such efforts seem stalled because many universities administrations and faculties oppose forced mergers with larger institutions and/or departments, or they are uncertain how to proceed once a merger has been proposed.
Next, there is the related issue of the 'corporatization' of the national universities. The language of the plan says that management methods of the private sector will be introduced. Does this mean that the former national universities should be run along the lines of currently existing private ones, many of which are on the verge of bankruptcy, even as they charge fees 2-3 times greater than public universities? Or is what is meant by private sector management methods something along the lines of for-profit companies? The plan does not really specify just what are the management methods best adaptable to the needs of the national universities as they transition to forcibly merged independent entities of much larger size with multiple, dispersed campuses. Are current administrators supposed to bring in outside advisers and consultants, and, if so, where from--government, government corporations, government-backed NGOs, private corporations, business co-operatives, or third sector non-profits? And if they do, might not such measures actually increase management costs rather than lead to savings?
Questions about Revitalizing Scientific Research
The national government and its MEXT seem unrealistic in expecting two complex processes to be carried out at the same time in anticipation of immediate savings for the national education and science budgets (i.e., one, restructuring and mergers; two, transition to administrative independence). The third major point of the COE plan emphasizes a shift to a competitive system for awarding grants, with outside, peer review of grant proposals. This would seem to indicate that the national government is getting ready to reduce the annual bloc grants given to national universities, much of which support existing research as well as taught programs and subsidized tuition fees. On this third issue, the language of the COE program reflects the earlier call for a 'top 30' set of universities. Yet the plan confusingly calls for grants to go to the best 10-30 universities in each of the following disparate fields: life sciences, chemistry, materials science,information, electrical science, electronics, human literature, interdisciplinary subjects, and 'new areas'.
One obvious question concerning this last priority of the COE program is: Why don't the designated fields match more closely with the specific priorities set down in the Science and Technology Basic Plan? Also, it is not really clear just how definitive the qualifications of the 'expert committee' in charge of evaluating the grant proposals are, especially given the topical range of the actual submissions. Nor is it clear how objective, thorough, or peer-reviewed the actual process of selection was. What is clear is that for FY 2002, around $152 million was promised to be spent over 5 years on a total of 113 research projects scattered almost equally across all the fields listed above, at national, public and private universities located all over Japan.
What is also obvious is that there is as yet no obvious pattern for creating through competition and incentives a 'top 30' of universities or 100 'centers of excellence' in research. Moreover, the money going out through the COE program seems more to be rewarding already existing research programs rather than providing seed money to the new areas of research thought vital to economic and social revitalization. As if the current state of over diversification was not enough, the COE program promised that in FY 2003 it would make selections in still yet five more fields: medicine, mathematics/physics/Earth Science, machinery/civil engineering/construction/other engineering, the social sciences, and 'interdisciplinary' areas.
The COEs now in place across the nation are supposed to focus their activities on doctoral and post-doctoral research and scholarship--that is, if they are active at all. Capable researchers already at work in the relative safety of existing 'laboratories' (co-operating research and teaching groups) have proven reluctant to commit to the new centers. After all, the COEs have no long record of results and often lack a familiar sempai (older mentor) for a younger researcher to work under. Meanwhile, post-doctoral researchers from abroad with only survival level Japanese, such as those on EU stipends, have found many of the centers unable to operate with English as a common language for communication.
Other Types of Co-operative Research
One bottom-up variation of co-operative research that is starting to take hold is the non-profit organization (NPO), a type of entity only recently given official corporate status under national law. Academics from universities or researchers from newly independent institutes can form and run an NPO with a specific mission in collaboration with private companies, receiving aid from both the public and private sectors. Another recent revision to the laws allows academics and researchers at national and public institutions to serve directly on the boards of for-profit, joint stock companies and high tech start-ups (e.g., biotechnology) hoping to go public in order to further co-operative research, both in order to draw in funding from the private sector (much of it venture capital) for promising targeted research and for the purpose of speeding up the commercial pay-offs for such applied research. Finally, as academics move into the world of business, it seems quite likely that the world of business will come to them: As part of a nation-wide, bottom-up deregulation campaign, a Tokyo company involved in education and training has submitted a request to be allowed to start up a university and graduate school; legislative changes to existing laws governing education now allow for-profit entities to set up and run schools, including at the tertiary level.
Venture Businesses
Only universities and institutes that can conduct research and scholarship at the doctoral and post-doctoral levels can host a COE. So universities of all types (quasi-national,quasi-public, and private, including those with no chance for a COE) are now trying a more bottom-up strategy to raise funds and earn sustainable income: venture businesses (VBs). By 2004 close to a thousand such university- and research-institute- linked VBs were in operation, with a record 179 created in 2003 alone. Clusters of VBs have sprung up in the urban areas, such as Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka. Unwilling to leave things to geographic chance, the national government has also funded 45 'venture business laboratories' nationwide, with most at regional second- and third-tier universities and institutes with faculties of science and technology.
Many of the VBs are joint ventures between a university and a group of investors or a company. Up until recently co-operation between universities and private enterprise usually put a top university in Japan into a tie-up with a top company in Japan. The key scientists and the companies often profited, but universities had no way to get their share if the research led to a marketable idea yielding profits. One recent change to benefit the universities has been the establishment of intellectual property offices on campuses. These can help academics and researchers file for patent, copyright and trademark protections while also assuring that universities get a share of profits from licensing agreements and money-making enterprises which commercialize the intellectual property.
Conclusion
As the Koizumi period of politics draws to its close, critics have already started to downplay the long-term impact of his mostly half-measure or stop-gap reforms. In one area of government-society relations, though, Koizumi and his cabinets clearly pushed for the most radical of reform plans under consideration and got what they wanted: in 2003-2004, the conversion of the country's system of 87 national universities and colleges into individual, autonomous national university corporations (NUCs). However, this has to be qualified somewhat. The plans for university incorporation that were put into effect 1 April (the start of the fiscal and school years) of 2004 were not so much a break from the previous two decades of developments and planned changes in tertiary education as they were a bold culmination in continuity with them. On the other hand, it must remembered that much of Japan's era of reform has been a panicked response to an economic crisis brought about by US policies that led to, among other serious problems, a severe over-valuation of the Japanese yen.
Those two prior decades of changes in tertiary education leading up to the creation of the NUCs comprised many profound developments, such as the following:
-the establishment of a handful of new research universities and institutes, decision-making at which flows from a central administration--in sharp contrast with traditions at national and public universities that are based on consensual, collegial relations across often rival departments and laboratories;
-the expansion of graduate program and their enrollments, including American-style professional schools of business, law, and accounting;
-growth in doctoral and post-doctoral programs, including in newer disciplines, e.g., IT, bio-technology, nano-technology, life sciences, and cross-disciplinary studies;
-a steady increase in the number of international students hosted, to over 120,000 annually, about 25% enrolled in graduate schools;
-more public funding of the entire tertiary sector, including private institutions, which outnumber national and public ones, with a target of 1% of GDP;
-increased funding for research (including more basic research) to compensate for its decline in private industry, with an accompanying shift towards competitive awards, with a target of 7-8% of annual national budgets, and a national goal of 3% of GDP for ALL scientific R&D (with national government spending accounting for 1% of GDP);
-legislative and regulatory changes that allowed the national universities to tie up with other entities to pursue research and expand course offerings, including tie-ups with other universities (of all types, national, public and private), research institutes, local governments, and private industry;
-parallel changes that allowed national university academics to serve on the boards of NPOs and for-profit corporations;
-internal and external systems of evaluation, independent of national government certification, going beyond minimal accreditation, and including accreditation for graduate programs and field-specific accreditation.
However, we predict here that these reforms will not be sufficient to save the tertiary sector in Japan from crisis and partial collapse. The demographic realities are harsh and inescapble. There simply will not be enough senior high graduates after the year 2010 to support the over-built higher education sector. Attempts at maintaining enrollments with international students (there are now over 120,000 studying in Japan) will reach a peak because of the language barriers, since Japanese universities are incapable of providing significant amounts of curriculum in English. An elite group of 50-100 institutions will emerge, while hundreds of colleges and universities will disappear--either absorbed by more successful ones or completely gone from bankruptcy and disestablishment. It is also unlikely that the government will reach its goal of thirty world-class institutions. If even ten institutions make lists of world rankings by the year 2020, and if these institutions are not necessarily limited to old imperial-national universities, these results will, in historical perspective, have been a major accomplishment.
News posts on the demographic crisis and reasons for the failure of English education will follow in the remaining days of April.
Japan's Tertiary Education System: Developments in the Koizumi Era of Reform
Charles Jannuzi
Abstract
This paper will survey the major developments and changes that have taken place during the past decade in Japan's tertiary education system and put them into international (comparative) and historical perspectives. It also will attempt to assess critically the impact of major reforms on the national and public universities (and the response of the more numerous private universities to these reforms as well). For example, as of 1 April 2004, Japan's 87 national universities were 'denationalized' and incorporated into 'autonomous institutions' (or 'juridical persons') giving them, at least in theory, wider discretionary powers over personnel management, teaching and research assignments, program and curriculum development. The new status was supposed to result in more local autonomy within each institution over the allocation of money for their mandated missions in teaching, conveying public services to their regions, and conducting basic and applied research in science and technology. Have such top-down reforms proven effective, and have their effects matched the government's stated intentions? It is the author's contention that, not only are the reforms a classic case of reform over-reach, but that Japan's overbuilt university system will face demographic, financial and socio-cultural crises that the current Koizumi era of reform, now coming to its close, has utterly failed to address.
Introduction
This year, as the Koizumi period of politics comes to its close, pundits are already skeptically evaluating the accomplishments of his administrations. The PM had promised that his reforms would spare no part of the national government and political economy. He even threatened to destroy his own long-ruling party, the LDP, in order to effect the changes.
Much of the electorate, when asked, said they supported the reform agenda of the popular PM, but in the long run they did not really understand his rationales or his priorities. For example, the profitable postal system (which includes huge, world-class savings and insurance divisions) was not in any state of crisis, however much it might have been the envy of struggling banks and insurance companies. It had already accepted and assimilated reforms that improved its business plans and operations. If anything, the financial health of the postal system showed that government-run companies can compete profitably in a capitalist political economy. Yet the full privatization (and eventual public listing) of the postal system dominated debate in last year's election. Meanwhile, the main opposition to postal reform came from within Koizumi's own ruling LDP. More than anything it would seem Koizumi's desire to 'reform' the postal system reflected a personal vendetta he had against the bureaucrats in charge of it.
Ironically, while the PM was often at war with his own party and the bureaucrats of his own government, his divisive leadership ultimately prevailed, delivering--as much by accident as by design--a landslide victory late last year in a lower house election, defeating a united opposition party (the DPJ) that advocated far more liberal, pro-business reforms! On the other hand, Koizumi's inattention to any sort of foreign policy independent of the US and his open displays of conservative nationalism and unquestioningly pro-US policies alienated much of the rest of Asia, most importantly the emergent economic powerhouse of China.
In one area of government-society relations though, Koizumi and his cabinet pushed for the most radical of reform plans under consideration--the conversion of the country's system of national universities and colleges into individual, autonomous national university corporations (NUCs) in 2003-2004. However, this has to be qualified: the corporatization plan put into effect 1 April (the start of the fiscal and school years in Japan) of 2004 was not so much a break from the previous two decades of developments in tertiary education than a bold culmination in continuity with it.
Overview of Higher Education in Japan
Compulsory education takes in students up to grade 9 (the third year of junior high school), but continuance rates for senior high school are a very high - 95%, with graduation from them almost a matter of course for college-bound students (though the drop-rate from vocational schools is high). A common perception of colleges and universities in Japan is that they are selective and therefore entrance is only gained after passing rigorous examinations; however, continuance rates from the secondary to the tertiary level are now approaching 60%-70%--if one is flexible about what constitutes 'higher education'. Considering the declining populations of secondary level cohorts and the very low failure rate of matriculated students, it is possible to argue that Japanese tertiary education has for quite some time been in an era of open admissions and rivals the U.S. in at least the level of young adults' participation in higher education.
There are currently nearly 1300 accredited colleges and universities in Japan, divided approximately half and half between 2 and 4-year institutions (contrast this with the U.K's totals of 89 universities and 69 colleges of higher education). Even as it became clear that irreversible demographic trends meant fewer students in the future, Japan was still adding new schools well into the 1990s. Such a large number of schools creates a considerable tertiary sector unsurpassed in the non-anglophone world and second only to the US's in developed countries. If the various "senmon gakko" (sometimes akin to the European polytechnic, most usually like the American business college) are also included, the tertiary sector expands to an enormous scope taking in thousands of universities, colleges, and institutes.
Demographic decline and the extended economic recession of the 1990s forced change on Japan, and education has hardly escaped such effects; this includes the tertiary sector of education. One of the possible sources of Japan's economic running in place is demographics: as the society increasingly ages and retires but with a birth rate as low as Italy's, every year there are significantly fewer and fewer children entering the school systems of most prefectures and cities of Japan. Japan's high school graduate population of 2 million in 1992 is predicted to drop to 1.2 million by the year 2010. The question for debate and consideration is this: Can even higher levels of high school graduates enrolling in higher education compensate for the overall decline in numbers? In combination with their nascent efforts at adult life-long learning programs, many colleges and universities are hoping so. For the better run institutions, such hopes may not be entirely unfounded: there are fewer and fewer full-time white-, blue- and grey- collar jobs for high school diploma holders. Therefore, a college education has come to be seen more than ever as the basic award helping one to gain entrance to the adult world of full-time employment. However, even if schools can sustain their enrollments, it is certain that they will have to change in order to meet the needs of (1) high school graduates less academically prepared for sustained, higher level work and (2) older, non-traditional students who may not fit in with the youth culture that now prevails at this level of education.
University Reform: The Prominent Case of the National Universities
In sharp contrast to Japan's image as a nation known for a frenetic commitment to business, modernization and development, most of its national universities have seemed like relatively sleepy oases of teaching and research. Except for a handful of internationally known universities (such as Tokyo Daigaku and Kyoto Daigaku), the national university system had consisted mostly of small, provincial institutions scattered across the country. The national universities and colleges have, since the start of the post-war period, come under the direct control of the Ministry of Education. However the day-to-day running could be called 'collegial', largely managed by co-operating (but also competing) faculties, departments, committees, research labs and academic cliques. Now these universities find themselves at a historic crossroads, one which has brought them under heavy public scrutiny as part of expectations for broad social and institutional reform. In July of 2003, the Japan Diet finally enacted--after much debate--legislation which re-established its 87 national colleges and universities (consolidated earlier from a total of 99 institutions) as 'independent administrative agencies or 'national university juridical persons'; the term now used most often to refer to them is 'national university corporations' (NUCs). Parallel legislation also reorganized under one national agency 59 technical colleges--five-year institutions which combine the last three years of high school with a specialized, two-year tertiary degree. It should be noted here that there is also a parallel system of some 80 public and metropolitan institutions across Japan which are now being forced into a similar set of reforms as the national universities have undergone.
This new autonomy, however, could paradoxically mean potential for more arbitrary control from outside. The universities and colleges have been given their new independent status in order to revitalize research and teaching programs through more centralized administration and the need to prove their qualification for bloc grants while competing more and more for diminishing subsidy from the national government. This creates the first paradox of independence, because the national government and its education ministry can control the central review committees assigned to evaluate the institutions and their programs. Furthermore, the faculty, some of whom may eventually be forced to give up lifelong employment for a system of limited, competitive tenure, have doubts about the criteria by which their own job performances will be judged. University executives and management now have the responsibility of coming up with 'mid-term' six-year plans covering all details of administration, planning, operations, research and teaching.
Revitalizing and Enlivening Higher Education
The transition from a highly selective university system to one for mass education occurred in Japan in the 1970s-1980s. The country now has nearly 1300 universities, junior colleges, and technical colleges (with over 600 being four-year universities). There are over 3 million students enrolled in these institutions, with over 60% of senior high graduates continuing their education into higher levels. Japan's system is only exceeded in size and scope in the developed world by the US's, and is, in terms of its impact on society and the workplace, unsurpassed in the non-anglophone world.
The last decade and a half could be called the first real era of reform for Japan's mass university education system. An often-stated ambition of educational reformers in Japan has been the re-vitalization of the university system with 30 'world-class' institutions at the top. That is, reformers want a tertiary system that can compete with the US's in terms of (1) taught programs beyond the undergraduate level, (2) quantity and quality of basic and applied research, and (3) independence and diversity in financial resources. This goal is far from being realized, though an elite core of around 50 universities and institutes has emerged as better placed historically and geographically to flourish in the liberalized, competitive environment.
Until the early 1990s, because the numbers of high school graduates had always exceeded university admissions slots, matriculation was a reason for celebration. Despite the view that a university education was a four-year vacation from working life, graduation with marginal grades from even the middling universities conferred sufficient cachet to ensure recruitment into lifetime employment. That is no longer the case. Lifetime employment, never guaranteed for women or workers at the thousands of smaller companies anyway, isn't even a serious point of discussion for today's university-leaving job-seekers.
After more than a decade of an over-valued currency and the consequent weak economic performance, related political turmoil, and reform overshoot, more and more Japanese express a loss of faith in old institutions and ways of doing things. There is largely a consensus, though, that there must be reform, though consensus is lacking on what that systematic change should consist of, how it should be carried out, or who should bear the brunt of the immediate consequences. Typical of societies with developed economies and large middle classes, publicly subsidized education has become a major focus of reform, though consistency and coherence of vision is a problem Japan shares with the rest of the developed world.
Some of the goals of the reform being imposed on the national university system (where most university-based research takes place) are felt to be urgent, necessary, and a key component of Prime Minister Koizumi's reform administration. They include the following:
(1) Saving the debt-ridden national government money. This will most obviously be done by eliminating and combining programs, college-/school-level divisions, and even entire universities.
(2) Launching the universities into local self-governance with strict fiscal accountability to the center. Once independent, these institutions may well have to compete for funding among themselves or with other public and private universities. In fact, private universities support the reform of national universities because they hope such changes to the system will free up more public subsidy to go their way. However, given the current fiscal problems facing the national and local governments, it seems that in the long term, the situation will be many more universities competing for a declining pool of national government money. Clearly, universities that hope to survive, regardless of their original foundation (former national, former public, private non-profit, but also now private for profit), will have to find alternative sources of funding and endowment.
(3) Enlivening teaching through effective evaluation of teachers' performance and curriculum development. Many Japanese educators contend that Japanese universities do not foster creativity or flexible approaches to problem-solving in their students, and teacher-centred lectures are often cited as one of the main reasons.
(4) Through competitive tenure the institutions are supposed to become more internationally competitive in scientific and technological research. As already stated, one goal is to take the many small universities and combine them into larger, more cost-efficient operations. It is also hoped that this will result in synergies in basic and applied research that will create at least a handful of world-class universities among the few that will remain. Another reform that is already having an effect is the change in the civil servant status of national university professors, scientists and medical doctors which allows them to form research and business tie-ups with the private sector. Perhaps most importantly the former national and now former public universities are supposed to be put into a competitive dynamic with the more numerous private universities which, up until now, have survived on less government subsidy and higher tuition rates.
Reforming Research
Japan's decade-long recession and deflationary economy have significantly diminished its private industry's ability to finance research in science and technology. Despite slumping tax revenues, ballooning budget deficits, and deteriorating credit ratings, the national government has recently devised strategies attempting to compensate for the decline of private sector R&D. In so doing, it has also intertwined its agenda for increasing research expenditures with its agenda for effective educational reform, especially at the tertiary level. For example, in January 2001, its Science and Technology Agency (STA) was merged with its Ministry of Education (Mombusho) to form the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), an entity that gets a whopping 8% of the national budget. The government also hopes to focus and steer research toward social outcomes to fill future needs more efficiently than it thinks the diverse private sector can. The government's experiences at leading industry-wide R&D consortia reveal that the private sector's research activities are often not basic enough, or they are redundant rather than complementary. Government-co-ordinated efforts involving a large number of companies lack sufficient mutual trust across closely competing companies for there to be real co-operation and collaboration. Also, the national government feels it has to set policy for the 'big picture' of the political economy just coming into focus in ways that make macroeconomic sense if it hopes to foster international competitiveness. It is also widely thought that government policy and spending must galvanize the development of technical solutions to cope adequately with such problems as Japan's graying society or future energy supply shortages.
According to MEXT, in 2001 the national government budgeted over $35 billion for spending falling under the general category of 'science and technology'.Under its second 'Science and Technology Basic Plan' (now in effect), the national government is attempting to fund scientific and technological research at an amount worth 1% or more of GDP each year during a five-year period (from 2001-2005). If broader definitions of what constitutes scientific R&D are used (such as IT , AI and software research), that already large figure could be pushed upward to the $45-55 billion range. In order to help manage qualitatively this huge quantity of money, the second Basic Plan identifies four priorities for funding: life sciences, information technology, the environment, and materials science/nano-technology. Though only a fraction of the amount spent in the private sector on R&D, the bulk of scientific and technological research being conducted in tertiary education in Japan takes place at its 89 national universities (which get the bulk of the $17 billion given annually to university-based research).
The importance of research at these universities is evidenced by the relatively large faculties they have compared to other public or private universities, since many of the full-time employees of the national universities are engaged more in research than teaching. However, national universities invariably reported lack of space on urban campuses with run-down buildings and obsolete equipment. To fix these problems, MEXT had in place a 'Five-year Plan for Urgent Development of Facilities of National Universities'. Such funding efforts were actually a part of the larger Science and Technology Basic plan of the 1990s. In addition to paying for more space and new equipment for research, the goals of this expenditure were specifically (1) to expand graduate schools (including doctoral programs), (2) to promote, identify and reward centers of excellence in research (including 10,000 post-doctoral positions), and (3) to re-organize and develop the former medical colleges as university-annex hospitals capable of clinical research while offering advanced in- and out-patient medical care. These, along with many other goals being discussed, were felt to be necessary if Japan is to create at least 30 universities 'international standard'.
One question repeatedly asked about this 'top 30' goal, however, is: Does it pay anything more than lip service to the improvement of the teaching of undergraduate students--the traditional responsibility of many of the regional national universities? Although comparative studies of test performance in primary and secondary education consistently put Japan's education at or near the top of the OECD countries, international ranking of university systems based on multiple criteria puts its universities consistently at or near the bottom. The national government and MEXT have insisted that, among other things, their reforms for the national universities are intended to promote excellence not only in research but also in all levels of teaching and learning as well, by (1) allowing greater flexibility in admissions criteria (both for undergraduate and graduate programs), (2) focusing on the teaching abilities of academics through both internal and external evaluations, (3) granting national universities independent administrative status (corporatisation), (4) implementing a strict grading system for university students, (5) promoting fixed-term employment so that professors and researchers can transfer easily among universities and colleges, (6) increasing competitive grants for both individual researchers and for entire universities, and (7) establishing more professional and graduate programs up through the doctoral level .
Centres of Excellence (COE) Program
Not willing merely to de-regulate and re-structure, the national government has tried to help institutions attain world class status. For example, there is the government-funded, nationwide establishment of research-oriented 'Centers of Excellence' (COEs), mostly at the national universities and a few elite private ones. Any university or institute that hoped for future top-30 ranking might have helped its case by winning the right to host one or more of the COEs. There are some striking aspects to the plan which seem to raise more questions than they answer, leading to great controversy among national university faculties and administrations. First, there is the 'scrap and build' issue. The plan is supposed to ramrod the reduction and consolidation of the number of national universities, yet such efforts seem stalled because many universities administrations and faculties oppose forced mergers with larger institutions and/or departments, or they are uncertain how to proceed once a merger has been proposed.
Next, there is the related issue of the 'corporatization' of the national universities. The language of the plan says that management methods of the private sector will be introduced. Does this mean that the former national universities should be run along the lines of currently existing private ones, many of which are on the verge of bankruptcy, even as they charge fees 2-3 times greater than public universities? Or is what is meant by private sector management methods something along the lines of for-profit companies? The plan does not really specify just what are the management methods best adaptable to the needs of the national universities as they transition to forcibly merged independent entities of much larger size with multiple, dispersed campuses. Are current administrators supposed to bring in outside advisers and consultants, and, if so, where from--government, government corporations, government-backed NGOs, private corporations, business co-operatives, or third sector non-profits? And if they do, might not such measures actually increase management costs rather than lead to savings?
Questions about Revitalizing Scientific Research
The national government and its MEXT seem unrealistic in expecting two complex processes to be carried out at the same time in anticipation of immediate savings for the national education and science budgets (i.e., one, restructuring and mergers; two, transition to administrative independence). The third major point of the COE plan emphasizes a shift to a competitive system for awarding grants, with outside, peer review of grant proposals. This would seem to indicate that the national government is getting ready to reduce the annual bloc grants given to national universities, much of which support existing research as well as taught programs and subsidized tuition fees. On this third issue, the language of the COE program reflects the earlier call for a 'top 30' set of universities. Yet the plan confusingly calls for grants to go to the best 10-30 universities in each of the following disparate fields: life sciences, chemistry, materials science,information, electrical science, electronics, human literature, interdisciplinary subjects, and 'new areas'.
One obvious question concerning this last priority of the COE program is: Why don't the designated fields match more closely with the specific priorities set down in the Science and Technology Basic Plan? Also, it is not really clear just how definitive the qualifications of the 'expert committee' in charge of evaluating the grant proposals are, especially given the topical range of the actual submissions. Nor is it clear how objective, thorough, or peer-reviewed the actual process of selection was. What is clear is that for FY 2002, around $152 million was promised to be spent over 5 years on a total of 113 research projects scattered almost equally across all the fields listed above, at national, public and private universities located all over Japan.
What is also obvious is that there is as yet no obvious pattern for creating through competition and incentives a 'top 30' of universities or 100 'centers of excellence' in research. Moreover, the money going out through the COE program seems more to be rewarding already existing research programs rather than providing seed money to the new areas of research thought vital to economic and social revitalization. As if the current state of over diversification was not enough, the COE program promised that in FY 2003 it would make selections in still yet five more fields: medicine, mathematics/physics/Earth Science, machinery/civil engineering/construction/other engineering, the social sciences, and 'interdisciplinary' areas.
The COEs now in place across the nation are supposed to focus their activities on doctoral and post-doctoral research and scholarship--that is, if they are active at all. Capable researchers already at work in the relative safety of existing 'laboratories' (co-operating research and teaching groups) have proven reluctant to commit to the new centers. After all, the COEs have no long record of results and often lack a familiar sempai (older mentor) for a younger researcher to work under. Meanwhile, post-doctoral researchers from abroad with only survival level Japanese, such as those on EU stipends, have found many of the centers unable to operate with English as a common language for communication.
Other Types of Co-operative Research
One bottom-up variation of co-operative research that is starting to take hold is the non-profit organization (NPO), a type of entity only recently given official corporate status under national law. Academics from universities or researchers from newly independent institutes can form and run an NPO with a specific mission in collaboration with private companies, receiving aid from both the public and private sectors. Another recent revision to the laws allows academics and researchers at national and public institutions to serve directly on the boards of for-profit, joint stock companies and high tech start-ups (e.g., biotechnology) hoping to go public in order to further co-operative research, both in order to draw in funding from the private sector (much of it venture capital) for promising targeted research and for the purpose of speeding up the commercial pay-offs for such applied research. Finally, as academics move into the world of business, it seems quite likely that the world of business will come to them: As part of a nation-wide, bottom-up deregulation campaign, a Tokyo company involved in education and training has submitted a request to be allowed to start up a university and graduate school; legislative changes to existing laws governing education now allow for-profit entities to set up and run schools, including at the tertiary level.
Venture Businesses
Only universities and institutes that can conduct research and scholarship at the doctoral and post-doctoral levels can host a COE. So universities of all types (quasi-national,quasi-public, and private, including those with no chance for a COE) are now trying a more bottom-up strategy to raise funds and earn sustainable income: venture businesses (VBs). By 2004 close to a thousand such university- and research-institute- linked VBs were in operation, with a record 179 created in 2003 alone. Clusters of VBs have sprung up in the urban areas, such as Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka. Unwilling to leave things to geographic chance, the national government has also funded 45 'venture business laboratories' nationwide, with most at regional second- and third-tier universities and institutes with faculties of science and technology.
Many of the VBs are joint ventures between a university and a group of investors or a company. Up until recently co-operation between universities and private enterprise usually put a top university in Japan into a tie-up with a top company in Japan. The key scientists and the companies often profited, but universities had no way to get their share if the research led to a marketable idea yielding profits. One recent change to benefit the universities has been the establishment of intellectual property offices on campuses. These can help academics and researchers file for patent, copyright and trademark protections while also assuring that universities get a share of profits from licensing agreements and money-making enterprises which commercialize the intellectual property.
Conclusion
As the Koizumi period of politics draws to its close, critics have already started to downplay the long-term impact of his mostly half-measure or stop-gap reforms. In one area of government-society relations, though, Koizumi and his cabinets clearly pushed for the most radical of reform plans under consideration and got what they wanted: in 2003-2004, the conversion of the country's system of 87 national universities and colleges into individual, autonomous national university corporations (NUCs). However, this has to be qualified somewhat. The plans for university incorporation that were put into effect 1 April (the start of the fiscal and school years) of 2004 were not so much a break from the previous two decades of developments and planned changes in tertiary education as they were a bold culmination in continuity with them. On the other hand, it must remembered that much of Japan's era of reform has been a panicked response to an economic crisis brought about by US policies that led to, among other serious problems, a severe over-valuation of the Japanese yen.
Those two prior decades of changes in tertiary education leading up to the creation of the NUCs comprised many profound developments, such as the following:
-the establishment of a handful of new research universities and institutes, decision-making at which flows from a central administration--in sharp contrast with traditions at national and public universities that are based on consensual, collegial relations across often rival departments and laboratories;
-the expansion of graduate program and their enrollments, including American-style professional schools of business, law, and accounting;
-growth in doctoral and post-doctoral programs, including in newer disciplines, e.g., IT, bio-technology, nano-technology, life sciences, and cross-disciplinary studies;
-a steady increase in the number of international students hosted, to over 120,000 annually, about 25% enrolled in graduate schools;
-more public funding of the entire tertiary sector, including private institutions, which outnumber national and public ones, with a target of 1% of GDP;
-increased funding for research (including more basic research) to compensate for its decline in private industry, with an accompanying shift towards competitive awards, with a target of 7-8% of annual national budgets, and a national goal of 3% of GDP for ALL scientific R&D (with national government spending accounting for 1% of GDP);
-legislative and regulatory changes that allowed the national universities to tie up with other entities to pursue research and expand course offerings, including tie-ups with other universities (of all types, national, public and private), research institutes, local governments, and private industry;
-parallel changes that allowed national university academics to serve on the boards of NPOs and for-profit corporations;
-internal and external systems of evaluation, independent of national government certification, going beyond minimal accreditation, and including accreditation for graduate programs and field-specific accreditation.
However, we predict here that these reforms will not be sufficient to save the tertiary sector in Japan from crisis and partial collapse. The demographic realities are harsh and inescapble. There simply will not be enough senior high graduates after the year 2010 to support the over-built higher education sector. Attempts at maintaining enrollments with international students (there are now over 120,000 studying in Japan) will reach a peak because of the language barriers, since Japanese universities are incapable of providing significant amounts of curriculum in English. An elite group of 50-100 institutions will emerge, while hundreds of colleges and universities will disappear--either absorbed by more successful ones or completely gone from bankruptcy and disestablishment. It is also unlikely that the government will reach its goal of thirty world-class institutions. If even ten institutions make lists of world rankings by the year 2020, and if these institutions are not necessarily limited to old imperial-national universities, these results will, in historical perspective, have been a major accomplishment.
03 February 2008
An extended look at academic freedom in HE in Japan
Academic freedom in Japan's higher education--a more in-depth look
by Charles Jannuzi
Introduction
Many attempts at analyzing the nature of government in post-war Japan tend to emphasize continuity with 'old' Japan and its conservative nationalism. However, such analysis does not insightfully refer to tendencies that are ancient or even old by historical standards. Instead, any connection with past rule has to be made with early modern Japan, from the start of the Meiji era (1868) to the start of the second world war.
Sweeping political, social and cultural changes in the last half of the 19th century opened up Japan to outside ideas, knowledge and technology. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 was actually a political revolution which swept away most elements of the old shogunate government and its prestige culture. New factions of elites capable of leadership and rule emerged during a time of great social unrest and change.
Some historical background
Under the guise of restoring an emperor, they established a constitutional monarchy which then oversaw the laws and policies of early modern Japan of the Meiji and Taishou eras (1868-1927). Enlightenment-inspired moves toward pluralism and democracy were checked by a government headed and run by the survivors of a political and social revolution. They gave top priority to retaining and expanding their power through institutionalizing a national culture of unity and by pushing for the all-out industrial development of the country.
From the very beginning of modern Japan, a tightly controlled education system at the primary and lower secondary (middle school) levels was instituted to help effect conformance to a national culture and manage top-down control of social change and development. On the other hand, a relatively lighter, more liberal touch to the upper levels (upper secondary, normal schools for teacher training, tertiary) was thought vital to assure that these levels expanded in terms of facilities and trained staff. Teachers at this level required sufficient academic freedom to assure advanced learning in scientific and technical subjects.
Relative academic freedom brought with it deep obligations: Access to the top parts of the higher education system was supposed to be granted only to a tested, loyal, meritocratic elite deemed capable and selfless enough to run a modernized Japan. All teachers took on the status of civil servants of the imperial state. Even teachers at the numerous, privately run high schools and colleges could be characterized as 'quasi-civil servants'.
For nationalists in the Meiji and Taishou periods, the desires of the individual had to be subordinated to the needs of the traditional household, legitimate civil government, and the national development state. Rights such as freedoms of speech, conscience, and assembly were not so much positive rights as they were limited privileges granted to loyal subjects by the government, at the top of which sat the emperor.
Still, in the period from the Meiji Restoration up through the 1920s, the Japanese version of academic freedom was considered vital to intellectual inquiry and scientific progress--key components of national development. The fight for academic freedom resulted in some victories when university professors criticized government policy and survived calls for their dismissal. Up to the end of the Taishou era (1912-26), most professors and lecturers singled out for expressing 'dangerous thoughts' (usually about the government or the emperor) were allowed to retain their posts.
Typically, those who got into trouble had tried to use modern social science to analyze the imperial system or its related religion, 'state Shinto'. Though most academics were not this brave, the few scholars who were might lose their academic posts and face severe ostracism. At least in terms of punishment, the only offense that could be worse would be to pursue Marxist analysis. Marxists could be imprisoned.
From the late 1920s onwards, Japan slid increasingly into authoritarian rule and militarism. University professors could be forced to resign their positions and find their works banned.
Post-war Japan--rupture or continuity?
One argument says that the overwhelming loss and destruction of the war, combined with American occupation and reconstruction, led to a total rupture from early modern Japan. The argument then continues that this embrace of American concepts of government, society, and individual rights re-created Japan as Asia's most liberal, western nation, with a war-renouncing constitution to keep things that way.
An opposing view, however, holds that conservative-nationalist resistance to outside power helped much less liberal elements re-assert control over the political economy of Japan. The conclusion of this interpretation of post-war Japan is that human rights are not well-protected, especially for anyone or any group not viewed as 'Japanese'.
Academic freedom, a positive right in the constitution
Academic freedom is now firmly established as a positive right in Japan. It has been since the Occupation government promulgated what many legal scholars and historians have described as a 'liberal' and 'enlightened' constitution in 1946. This document, along with fundamental laws creating a somewhat Americanized education system, took effect in 1947, a year when most Japanese were desperately struggling to feed, clothe, and house themselves.
In the constitution, academic freedom took its place alongside the more commonly stated rights of 'freedom of speech', 'thought', 'conscience', 'assembly' and 'association'. Chapter III (Rights and Duties), Article 23 states, 'Academic freedom is guaranteed.' Academic freedom exists undeniably as a 'positive' right in constitutional law. The question is, Has it become a right in practice, such as through case law (legal precedents) in favor of wronged academics and enlightened institutional policies?
In higher education, a national system of control under the ministry of education prevails, although it is nowhere near as complete as the government hold on primary and secondary education. Nationalist conservatives (including so-called independent 'reformers') have run the central government since the end of the occupation, with only two short-lived socialist intervals.
This exposes Japan's academia as somewhat left of the politicians who head the government that attempts to oversee and subsidize endeavors in research, scholarship, and teaching.
In addition to providing continuity, bureaucrats in the ministry of education act as a buffer between university academics and politicians because overall they hold a wider ranging set of philosophies and opinions on education and universities than the elected and appointed leadership.
If academic freedom is looked at from the perspective of freedom to teach, do scholarship or research within a specialty, then academics at national and public universities in Japan are given considerable latitude. They do not have to conform to a national curriculum or use ministry-approved textbooks. Compared to corporate researchers, many at universities and national research centers can pursue pure research and abstract theory, regardless of immediate applications or returns on investment.
Academic freedom and labor policies
Most cases that concern, at least in part, 'academic freedom' in Japan play themselves out in labor negotiations, case arbitration, and the courts. This is because academic freedom is often said to be violated when universities and their program are accused of not giving a justifiable reason when demoting, financially penalizing, firing, dismissing or not renewing the contract of teaching or research personnel.
Unless tasked with administrative and committees, some academics get to spend most of their time doing research and scholarship. The national universities especially are staffed with large numbers of people whose main job is somehow connected to research, not teaching.
Other academics get to teach advanced-level courses using the content they prefer (no matter how idiosyncratic), running small seminars for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students that are much closer to the sort of narrow specialties that scholarly academics prefer. If a university teacher of this second type demonstrates enough success at research and scholarship at a specialty, he or she may be given the chance to join the group who do little or no teaching.
A third type of faculty consists of those who have to do most of the lower-level teaching, right down to the so-called 'service' courses of general education required of first and second year students. This system is filled out by large numbers of part-time teachers usually teaching in general education as well. People in this third lower tier are most often involved in claims over breach of the right of academic freedom. While they tend to have much less academic freedom because of the constraints of their teaching assignments, they are also the most likely to have their salaries cut or their positions reassigned or terminated.
Troubles at Tokyo Metropolitan University
Take the example of Tokyo Metropolitan University, the highest-ranking public (not national) university in Japan Because of troubled finances at many local governments, starting in 2005, public universities (86 total) were put into process of consolidating and corporatizing along the lines of the national universities (all 87 were corporatized in the period 2003-4).
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government had been proposing since 2003 the establishment of a new public university corporation through been the consolidation of four existing institutions into one: the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology, Tokyo Metropolitan University of Health Sciences, and Tokyo Metropolitan College were supposed to be merged with the prestigious Tokyo Metropolitan University.
Many of the faculty at the institutions affected have objected vociferously to the proposed imposition of performance-based pay and five-year contracts. Those who objected also refused to sign agreements for course assignments, which the administration needed in order to apply to the national government for approval in establishing the re-chartered public university corporation.
The 100 professors and lecturers who have refused to agree to re-assignment demanded, among other things, that faculty councils retain control of teaching appointments and that full-time teachers not be forced to submit to the five-year contracts. Many in the current faculties object to the proposed heavier load of introductory level classes with larger numbers of students to teach and evaluate. They understandably wish to avoid being put into that third tier of contractual or provisionally employed teachers.
Although the national universities were forced to lead the way in privatization and corporatization, the plan to combine public institutions in Tokyo is considered a model case which could be applied as 'best practice' for management in the reorganization and streamlining of both public and former national universities nationwide. The proposals for 3-5-year contracts and merit pay for teachers have drawn special attention.
Actually, the contract-merit system that the Tokyo Metropolitan government is now attempting to impose on the teaching faculties of its universities and colleges comes from a plan put forward at national research centers and at the former national universities in order to 'invigorate' government-funded research. It most likely originates from private industry and private universities (who were the first to use merit-based contracts for educators).
This is the so-called 'tokunin' system whereby researchers sign contracts (often five years for researchers, but often three years for teachers). Renewal--leading to a possible career track position--depends upon a review process and successful results, such as the development of patents and commercial applications stemming from the initial period of research. However, it is questionable whether such a system is the most appropriate for the professional development of university teachers, nor is it clear how their performance under such a 'tokunin' system can be effectively and objectively evaluated.
The goings-on at national universities
The administrations of former national universities (now National University Corporations or NUCs), however, have appeared to be reluctant to propose such a system for MOST of their teaching personnel. That reluctance changed only recently, and the largely powerless foreign lecturers became precedent-setting example. For example, as of April 2005, University of Kobe, a former national university, adopted a contract system for its foreign lecturers, limiting them to a three-year contract and no automatic renewals (though they would be allowed to compete for the position should it be re-opened to new candidates).
Private universities and the plight of foreign nationals
The policies and practices that affect the academic freedom and employment rights of foreign nationals within Japan's extensive private system of universities and two-year colleges (together totaling 984 institutions) vary so much as to make concise generalizations nearly impossible. It is an understatement to say that a broad range of situations is possible.
At one extreme, discrimination is obviously rampant: unlike their full-time Japanese counterparts, who have not been forced onto contracts, foreign personnel at many private universities and colleges might (1) face arbitrary dismissal, (2) have one- or three-year contracts with strict renewal limits imposed, (3) receive lower salaries, no bonuses and higher pay cuts, (4) be barred from meetings where decisions are made, and (5) be denied health insurance and retirement benefits (since employers try to avoid bearing their share of the fees for the national scheme).
Any charge of nationwide discrimination, however, has to be qualified because the administrations of some private universities and colleges are so dictatorial and their unions so weak that even Japanese nationals can face similarly severe employment conditions and unfair labor practices. Moreover, the very numerous part-time personnel--who often do more teaching than full-time faculty, regardless of nationality--have very little control over their job situations and fewer employment rights or benefits.
by Charles Jannuzi
Introduction
Many attempts at analyzing the nature of government in post-war Japan tend to emphasize continuity with 'old' Japan and its conservative nationalism. However, such analysis does not insightfully refer to tendencies that are ancient or even old by historical standards. Instead, any connection with past rule has to be made with early modern Japan, from the start of the Meiji era (1868) to the start of the second world war.
Sweeping political, social and cultural changes in the last half of the 19th century opened up Japan to outside ideas, knowledge and technology. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 was actually a political revolution which swept away most elements of the old shogunate government and its prestige culture. New factions of elites capable of leadership and rule emerged during a time of great social unrest and change.
Some historical background
Under the guise of restoring an emperor, they established a constitutional monarchy which then oversaw the laws and policies of early modern Japan of the Meiji and Taishou eras (1868-1927). Enlightenment-inspired moves toward pluralism and democracy were checked by a government headed and run by the survivors of a political and social revolution. They gave top priority to retaining and expanding their power through institutionalizing a national culture of unity and by pushing for the all-out industrial development of the country.
From the very beginning of modern Japan, a tightly controlled education system at the primary and lower secondary (middle school) levels was instituted to help effect conformance to a national culture and manage top-down control of social change and development. On the other hand, a relatively lighter, more liberal touch to the upper levels (upper secondary, normal schools for teacher training, tertiary) was thought vital to assure that these levels expanded in terms of facilities and trained staff. Teachers at this level required sufficient academic freedom to assure advanced learning in scientific and technical subjects.
Relative academic freedom brought with it deep obligations: Access to the top parts of the higher education system was supposed to be granted only to a tested, loyal, meritocratic elite deemed capable and selfless enough to run a modernized Japan. All teachers took on the status of civil servants of the imperial state. Even teachers at the numerous, privately run high schools and colleges could be characterized as 'quasi-civil servants'.
For nationalists in the Meiji and Taishou periods, the desires of the individual had to be subordinated to the needs of the traditional household, legitimate civil government, and the national development state. Rights such as freedoms of speech, conscience, and assembly were not so much positive rights as they were limited privileges granted to loyal subjects by the government, at the top of which sat the emperor.
Still, in the period from the Meiji Restoration up through the 1920s, the Japanese version of academic freedom was considered vital to intellectual inquiry and scientific progress--key components of national development. The fight for academic freedom resulted in some victories when university professors criticized government policy and survived calls for their dismissal. Up to the end of the Taishou era (1912-26), most professors and lecturers singled out for expressing 'dangerous thoughts' (usually about the government or the emperor) were allowed to retain their posts.
Typically, those who got into trouble had tried to use modern social science to analyze the imperial system or its related religion, 'state Shinto'. Though most academics were not this brave, the few scholars who were might lose their academic posts and face severe ostracism. At least in terms of punishment, the only offense that could be worse would be to pursue Marxist analysis. Marxists could be imprisoned.
From the late 1920s onwards, Japan slid increasingly into authoritarian rule and militarism. University professors could be forced to resign their positions and find their works banned.
Post-war Japan--rupture or continuity?
One argument says that the overwhelming loss and destruction of the war, combined with American occupation and reconstruction, led to a total rupture from early modern Japan. The argument then continues that this embrace of American concepts of government, society, and individual rights re-created Japan as Asia's most liberal, western nation, with a war-renouncing constitution to keep things that way.
An opposing view, however, holds that conservative-nationalist resistance to outside power helped much less liberal elements re-assert control over the political economy of Japan. The conclusion of this interpretation of post-war Japan is that human rights are not well-protected, especially for anyone or any group not viewed as 'Japanese'.
Academic freedom, a positive right in the constitution
Academic freedom is now firmly established as a positive right in Japan. It has been since the Occupation government promulgated what many legal scholars and historians have described as a 'liberal' and 'enlightened' constitution in 1946. This document, along with fundamental laws creating a somewhat Americanized education system, took effect in 1947, a year when most Japanese were desperately struggling to feed, clothe, and house themselves.
In the constitution, academic freedom took its place alongside the more commonly stated rights of 'freedom of speech', 'thought', 'conscience', 'assembly' and 'association'. Chapter III (Rights and Duties), Article 23 states, 'Academic freedom is guaranteed.' Academic freedom exists undeniably as a 'positive' right in constitutional law. The question is, Has it become a right in practice, such as through case law (legal precedents) in favor of wronged academics and enlightened institutional policies?
In higher education, a national system of control under the ministry of education prevails, although it is nowhere near as complete as the government hold on primary and secondary education. Nationalist conservatives (including so-called independent 'reformers') have run the central government since the end of the occupation, with only two short-lived socialist intervals.
This exposes Japan's academia as somewhat left of the politicians who head the government that attempts to oversee and subsidize endeavors in research, scholarship, and teaching.
In addition to providing continuity, bureaucrats in the ministry of education act as a buffer between university academics and politicians because overall they hold a wider ranging set of philosophies and opinions on education and universities than the elected and appointed leadership.
If academic freedom is looked at from the perspective of freedom to teach, do scholarship or research within a specialty, then academics at national and public universities in Japan are given considerable latitude. They do not have to conform to a national curriculum or use ministry-approved textbooks. Compared to corporate researchers, many at universities and national research centers can pursue pure research and abstract theory, regardless of immediate applications or returns on investment.
Academic freedom and labor policies
Most cases that concern, at least in part, 'academic freedom' in Japan play themselves out in labor negotiations, case arbitration, and the courts. This is because academic freedom is often said to be violated when universities and their program are accused of not giving a justifiable reason when demoting, financially penalizing, firing, dismissing or not renewing the contract of teaching or research personnel.
Unless tasked with administrative and committees, some academics get to spend most of their time doing research and scholarship. The national universities especially are staffed with large numbers of people whose main job is somehow connected to research, not teaching.
Other academics get to teach advanced-level courses using the content they prefer (no matter how idiosyncratic), running small seminars for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students that are much closer to the sort of narrow specialties that scholarly academics prefer. If a university teacher of this second type demonstrates enough success at research and scholarship at a specialty, he or she may be given the chance to join the group who do little or no teaching.
A third type of faculty consists of those who have to do most of the lower-level teaching, right down to the so-called 'service' courses of general education required of first and second year students. This system is filled out by large numbers of part-time teachers usually teaching in general education as well. People in this third lower tier are most often involved in claims over breach of the right of academic freedom. While they tend to have much less academic freedom because of the constraints of their teaching assignments, they are also the most likely to have their salaries cut or their positions reassigned or terminated.
Troubles at Tokyo Metropolitan University
Take the example of Tokyo Metropolitan University, the highest-ranking public (not national) university in Japan Because of troubled finances at many local governments, starting in 2005, public universities (86 total) were put into process of consolidating and corporatizing along the lines of the national universities (all 87 were corporatized in the period 2003-4).
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government had been proposing since 2003 the establishment of a new public university corporation through been the consolidation of four existing institutions into one: the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology, Tokyo Metropolitan University of Health Sciences, and Tokyo Metropolitan College were supposed to be merged with the prestigious Tokyo Metropolitan University.
Many of the faculty at the institutions affected have objected vociferously to the proposed imposition of performance-based pay and five-year contracts. Those who objected also refused to sign agreements for course assignments, which the administration needed in order to apply to the national government for approval in establishing the re-chartered public university corporation.
The 100 professors and lecturers who have refused to agree to re-assignment demanded, among other things, that faculty councils retain control of teaching appointments and that full-time teachers not be forced to submit to the five-year contracts. Many in the current faculties object to the proposed heavier load of introductory level classes with larger numbers of students to teach and evaluate. They understandably wish to avoid being put into that third tier of contractual or provisionally employed teachers.
Although the national universities were forced to lead the way in privatization and corporatization, the plan to combine public institutions in Tokyo is considered a model case which could be applied as 'best practice' for management in the reorganization and streamlining of both public and former national universities nationwide. The proposals for 3-5-year contracts and merit pay for teachers have drawn special attention.
Actually, the contract-merit system that the Tokyo Metropolitan government is now attempting to impose on the teaching faculties of its universities and colleges comes from a plan put forward at national research centers and at the former national universities in order to 'invigorate' government-funded research. It most likely originates from private industry and private universities (who were the first to use merit-based contracts for educators).
This is the so-called 'tokunin' system whereby researchers sign contracts (often five years for researchers, but often three years for teachers). Renewal--leading to a possible career track position--depends upon a review process and successful results, such as the development of patents and commercial applications stemming from the initial period of research. However, it is questionable whether such a system is the most appropriate for the professional development of university teachers, nor is it clear how their performance under such a 'tokunin' system can be effectively and objectively evaluated.
The goings-on at national universities
The administrations of former national universities (now National University Corporations or NUCs), however, have appeared to be reluctant to propose such a system for MOST of their teaching personnel. That reluctance changed only recently, and the largely powerless foreign lecturers became precedent-setting example. For example, as of April 2005, University of Kobe, a former national university, adopted a contract system for its foreign lecturers, limiting them to a three-year contract and no automatic renewals (though they would be allowed to compete for the position should it be re-opened to new candidates).
Private universities and the plight of foreign nationals
The policies and practices that affect the academic freedom and employment rights of foreign nationals within Japan's extensive private system of universities and two-year colleges (together totaling 984 institutions) vary so much as to make concise generalizations nearly impossible. It is an understatement to say that a broad range of situations is possible.
At one extreme, discrimination is obviously rampant: unlike their full-time Japanese counterparts, who have not been forced onto contracts, foreign personnel at many private universities and colleges might (1) face arbitrary dismissal, (2) have one- or three-year contracts with strict renewal limits imposed, (3) receive lower salaries, no bonuses and higher pay cuts, (4) be barred from meetings where decisions are made, and (5) be denied health insurance and retirement benefits (since employers try to avoid bearing their share of the fees for the national scheme).
Any charge of nationwide discrimination, however, has to be qualified because the administrations of some private universities and colleges are so dictatorial and their unions so weak that even Japanese nationals can face similarly severe employment conditions and unfair labor practices. Moreover, the very numerous part-time personnel--who often do more teaching than full-time faculty, regardless of nationality--have very little control over their job situations and fewer employment rights or benefits.
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